


Changed

by Viridian5



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Apocalypse, Drama, Enemies, Fantasy, M/M, Threesome, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-02-26
Updated: 1999-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:28:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything changes beyond anyone's control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changed

**Author's Note:**

> Vague spoilers for "The End" and "The Beginning."
> 
> For Small Woodinat Creature, who asked about it really nicely (and often) after I told her my original concept. A few months later... I started this in November, but Alex kept lengthening it by pouncing on everyone, the slut.
> 
> I've hit a bit of an anniversary. While I started reading online slash in December '97, I didn't post my first slash story till February '98. A year later, it's still hard for me to believe that all this started with Small Woodinat Creature sending me the address for the MKRA saying that I _had_ to see this.
> 
> Beta by the wise and wily Feklar. A Squeakies nominee for Best Multi-Rodent Fic (must include two out of three: Krycek, Spender, Pendrell).

Mulder had been walking for two days, stopping only after dark to take shelter from the creatures that now ruled the night. Most of them could be fended off with fire and cold steel, but he was better off not encountering them at all. //If Scully had--//

He ruthlessly cut that thought off and numbed himself to the pain. Thinking about and mourning her could be done later, if he survived. He had more pressing concerns right now.

He stared at the towering wall of thick black thorns and intertwining stems in front of him. They rustled and twitched despite the stillness. The answers could be found in the center of that mess, where the FBI headquarters building could still be found. He hoped he could hack his way through before night fell.

Mulder stood in the quiet street surrounded by useless cars and focused his thoughts inward. To get what he needed, he would have to _believe_. Remembering how the prince had fought his way through a similar obstacle in Disney's _Sleeping Beauty_, he imagined a sword and shield and started to feel them in his hands. He thought of their look, heft, and even smell. In two minutes he held a silver sword in one hand and large shield in the other. He couldn't let himself think of how silly he must look in his jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket, and sneakers while carrying medieval weaponry for fear of breaking his conjury. Only a moment's doubt could destroy his work, force him to start over, and each try weakened him.

He had no idea how to use a sword, so he wielded it on the thorns a bit like an ax, while using the shield to protect his other side. Despite all his efforts to avoid thinking, to just do and be, he couldn't help himself. The tragedies of the last few days waited too close to the surface.

Five days ago, _something_ had struck that had made the most panicked speculations about the Y2K bug look mild by comparison. Almost all machinery had failed, leaving people without power, heat, water, or phones. Cars and subway trains had simply stopped, stranding untold numbers of people far from home, while planes had plunged from the sky. Hospitals had lost all patients who needed mechanistic help to live, yet were overwhelmed by the thousands more who hobbled in, desperate for medical care and shelter, only to find overworked doctors and nurses, working by candlelight, able to do only the most basic of triage with their dwindling supplies. Only the simplest machines, those not dependent on electricity, still worked at all. With communications dead, no one even knew if it had claimed only DC and its surrounding areas or the whole world.

Then, supernatural creatures had appeared and taken over. Demons, the Sidhe, trolls, shapeshifters, and other things that should not have existed began to attack and feed on a populace completely unprepared for them. Scully herself... Scully had been torn to pieces one night by something she hadn't even believed in. She'd died with a look of outraged confusion frozen on her bloody face, unable to believe even to the death that her logic and science had betrayed her.

The suicides and riots that had followed had been horrible, with terrified people turning on themselves and others. Humanity had been knocked back centuries in just days. The survivors huddled in their homes armed with guns and crude weapons and went out only occasionally during the day to barter for things they needed. At night they set up watches and tried to ignore the summoning bells, hoof beats, and ululating shrieks of the Wild Hunt.

Some people who were open to it, like Mulder, discovered that they had new abilities in this world. Mulder, as long as he believed and kept his mind focused on what it wanted, could conjure objects.

Once, his new "power" would have fascinated him. Now, he'd trade it all to get Scully and the world back the way they should have been.

He tried to keep his mind focused, but his grief and rage kept interfering. Scully's death reverberated like a shock through his heart. He raged at the deaths, the terror, the losses, the memory of the Lone Gunmen looking with despair and disbelief at the now useless computers and communications equipment of which they'd once been masters. He tried not to worry about the feeling that he had been called here.

He felt the sword and shield wavering in his distraction, with the thorns ready to rush in with almost sentient malevolence. To reinforce his conjuring, he thought back to the movie he'd gotten them from. When his mind summoned an image of the Lone Gunmen as his three good fairies, he had to fight off the giggles. He'd created the Sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue. The inevitable wry thought about him being the Sword of Truth strengthened him, but when he associated Scully with the Shield of Virtue, his mind reeled at the knowledge that she was gone forever. That association started to destroy the shield.

Mulder gasped for breath as he fought to maintain it. Between his struggle to preserve his weapons and to hack his way through the thorns, he was tiring fast. His body felt like a lead weight, and he didn't know how much further he had to go.

Suddenly, a weight landed on his shoulder from above. A glossy raven regarded him with a surprising intelligence. It stroked its soft head against his sweaty face, tickling him with its feathers, before dropping behind him.

"There's an easier way to get in, you know," a familiar, husky voice whispered in his ear.

Then something knocked Mulder out.

******************************************************

Alex looped the handcuff chain around the curved metal spine of the office chair before fastening the open cuff on Mulder's left hand. In this pose, Mulder, still out cold, could have been asleep with his head thrown back. Surely he'd napped in this office before. Alex hoped he appreciated the irony of being incarcerated in his former basement sanctuary.

The long line of Mulder's exposed neck called too strongly to be ignored. Alex nuzzled it and caught the smells of everywhere Mulder had been in the last few days overlaying the agent's own scent. He smelled fire too, maybe a day old. It seemed that Mulder had overcome his phobia to save his life against the creatures that had similar fears. Good for him. Alex could make out weariness, despair, even a tinge of madness. And in it all, the scent of the change, like young spring grass and hot metal. Mulder must have been using his nascent ability for a few days now; that would make many things easier.

The new, enhanced senses that had come with Alex's change had opened the world in ways he never could have expected. Sometimes the deluge of sensory information distracted and seduced him, but he didn't want to go back to the way he had been. He couldn't even imagine it anymore.

Alex's new left hand stroked along Mulder's cheekbone. It and the arm it was attached to still didn't match his right perfectly--the skin looked as fresh and perfect as a baby's and was still too poreless--but he'd gotten better and closer every day over the past five. His shapeshifting became stronger and easier with use and no longer tired him out as badly as it once had. A good thing, since keeping the arm meant being perpetually shifted.

Alex gave the chair back a playful push just to watch Mulder and his seat spin. He made unconsciousness unbearably sexy, but he had to wait. Alex had business.

Alex took the stairs after an instinctive turn toward an elevator that no longer worked. When he got off at his floor, he smirked at one of the work crews, made up of enslaved FBI employees. They slowly and painfully cleared debris away under the watchful eyes of their work boss, who looked demoralized himself. It seemed that the man had some conscience, but probably not enough of one to ruin his own deal with the new regime to free or mobilize his fellow agents.

Puff had killed most of the people in the building who'd had any spine. A shame. Walterbear would have been useful to Alex's plans, but he'd been too obvious a threat and executed immediately. Puff had Skinner's head on a pike near his nest. Even Fowley might have been an asset, but her being both dangerous and a woman had caused such cognitive dissonance in the minds of the old boys' club that they'd offed her just for peace of mind.

Thus Alex had to take his allies wherever he could, as usual.

He stopped at the end of the floor and gazed out into the huge open space that made the building a shell of its former self--literally. Jeff, who stood at the edge, noticed him immediately. "Krycek's back, sir."

In the midst of the ruins, a huge gray shape stirred and raised its giant head. On all fours with its head held high, it occupied a space of five floors; its first change had destroyed seven floors and created the crater it nested in now. Smoke redolent of brimstone curled from its nostrils. "I hear that someone attempted our perimeter," the creature who'd once been the Cigarette Smoking Man said. Despite his immense size and threat, his voice remained the reedy shadow he'd had as a man.

Alex looked to Jeff, who raised only one eyebrow slightly. That slight movement said that Spender hadn't told Puff anything of value, so their alliance still held, and Alex could say anything he pleased.

"Someone tried to escape one of the interlopers by hiding under the thorns. A total failure, of course. He's dead now," Alex said.

"I heard you brought someone inside."

Alex directed a subtle but sharp look in Jeff's direction. A slight headshake indicated that Daddy had picked up that information from someone else. Alex reserved judgment, but he didn't trust Jeff for a second anyway.

"You said I could play as long as it didn't interfere with my work," Alex answered.

The dragon looked irritable. "_You_ get to play... Jeffrey, when is the next cattle car coming? I'm hungry..." He somehow sounded frightening and pathetic at the same time.

"Soon," Spender said. "You should give some thought to trying to get out on your own and--"

"You have no idea what kind of pain I'm in, boy! Don't make me demonstrate on you!" he roared. The stench and force knocked Alex and Jeff back. At least Old Smoky no longer incinerated people by accident.

Spender had been so taken aback that he'd lapsed into invisibility again. Sometimes Spender's scent became fainter, as if he started to disappear altogether. He concentrated himself visible again and said, "That won't be necessary, sir."

"Good." Then Puff curled in on himself to go back to sleep, muttering curses against Strughold and his incompetent Nazi wannabe-sorcerers, though not in those exact words.

Jeff looked pissed. No doubt Daddy's promises of power hadn't mentioned playing gofer and majordomo to an angry and mentally unstable dragon. Alex had been surprised to learn that Spender wasn't the gullible Daddy's boy he'd seemed; in fact, since the onset of the Change Jeff had survived and cemented his place in his father's organization by putting together a rather credible internal spy network. Alex played on that discontent as well as Spender's network and position with the old... thing for his own ends.

Once they'd made their exit and walked to one of the zones in which Spender claimed it was safe to talk, he asked, "How has Mulder manifested? I know he can create things, but how does the talent work?" He smiled at the look on Alex's face. "There's a reason why you need me here."

Alex resisted the urge to flatten that pretty mouth with his fist. It made no sense to get pissed off at Spender for exhibiting the very thing that he'd hooked up with the man for. "I'm not sure how it works."

"Then how are you going to handle him?"

Alex grinned. "The way I always have."

******************************************************

When Mulder came to, he nearly flipped the chair over trying to get up. Once he had himself balanced again, he figured out how he'd been fastened to the chair and started to work out a plan to get loose. His captor had taken his gun and three knives, but Mulder could at least conjure a key to get the damned cuffs off.

He quickly realized where he was. He wondered how the hell that weasel Spender could keep the place so clutter-free until he saw the full basket under the paper shredder. His rage almost brought a wave of conjured fire with it, which was not a good idea. It cheered Mulder a bit that he could still smell scorch, the lingering ghost of the office fire, beneath the scents of new carpet, furniture, and paint. //Let the little bastard always have the sense memory of how he came by all this.//

Mulder created and sculpted a little bit of metal in his hand, shaping it by trial and error at the cuff's lock. Tension and fatigue kept making him fumble, so he calmed himself by disparaging what that treacherous brown-noser had done with _his_ office. His hand and talent worked more smoothly as the part of his mind that usually worried instead sniped at how spotless the room was. It looked like no one ever worked in it. //Maybe he and Diana don't. Maybe they just pretend they're getting anything done. Probably suits the old bastard to have things that way.//

Mulder's concentration broke when Krycek walked in. The key-in-progress disappeared. Mulder went still and tried not to look as bitterly angry and disappointed as he felt.

"Is it good to be home, Mulder?"

"I'd have to redecorate first."

"Still a smartass. What the hell made you think you should chop your way in here and take on whatever big, bad thing you found?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"I do, and it's pathetic." Krycek moved closer.

"Like hell." Mulder turned the chair a little away so the bastard wouldn't notice his hands. //If I get him talking, I can pretend to listen and work on the key.// He'd memorized the last key shape, which had been close to what he'd needed.

"I knew this guy who gave up on living but didn't believe in suicide, so he made a list and--"

Mulder sighed and tried to jiggle the key in the cuff lock as surreptitiously as he could, but couldn't resist saying, "Checked it twice? Krycek, I don't--" Krycek gripped Mulder's chin to stop him from continuing. Mulder squirmed at the sudden feel of claws brushing his skin.

//What the hell has he become?//

"This is important, Mulder. So he made a list of all the people he wanted dead and went after them one by one, hoping one of them would off him but not helping them _too_ much. He got through all thirty names still alive. When he gave it some thought, he realized that he didn't want to die anymore."

"And what's your big lesson? `If you kill all the people you hate, your life will be happy?'"

"That's always a good lesson to learn, but no. You don't even realize what you're doing, do you, you stupid fuck? You set off after the Syndicate hoping they'd put you out of your misery, so you wouldn't have to feel guilty about outliving Scully."

"That's not--"

"They don't need you badgering them about putting everything back the way it was. Yeah, the aliens don't want to colonize this world as it is now and have gone dormant, but the Syndicate isn't particularly thrilled with the side effects. For one thing, that miscast spell turned them all into dragons."

"You're fucking kidding me."

"If only. Do you think they like that? Aside from that, they lost most of their data and all of the genetic material, ova, and incubating clones. All that stolen alien technology is worthless now. They're not happy people, and they're working 24-7 to find a way to fix things. You can't help them decipher those texts any faster. You're also in the wrong country. The German faction did this, and only they have a hope in hell of changing it, if it's even possible. How are you going to cross the Atlantic with things the way they are now, Mulder?"

Mulder reshaped the key a little and felt the lock starting to give. "So what are you suggesting?"

Krycek moved in so close that Mulder could feel long, thick lashes and hot breath brushing his skin. It did strange things to his own breathing. He felt a _pull_...

"It's a dangerous, new world out there, but the right people could take advantage. My shapechanging and brains with your talent could net us a comfortable living. We could watch each other's backs."

"What a surprise. You're turning on your masters."

"I have to get the hell out of here. The walls are closing in, and dealing with Puff the Magic Dragon every day is seriously sharpening my homicidal impulses to a fever pitch. I want _out_."

The cuff opened, and Krycek twitched as if he'd somehow heard the tiny click. Before the other man could react, Mulder unwrapped the chain from the chair and leapt from his seat, knocking his former partner over. He ran for the door.

Something snagged the back of his jacket and pulled him back hard. Mulder ricocheted off a wall, taking down a framed picture of Clinton with him. He lashed out with his still-cuffed hand and heard Krycek growl as the metal cuff hit his face. Then the whole world spun, and Mulder was pinned against the wall with a heavy weight holding him from behind. He felt his nose bending, so he turned his head a little, giving him a partial view of his captor.

Krycek panted a little, but his eyes crackled with excitement. Mulder felt heat and hardness against his ass and went still. //Oh, shit. Here we go again. Not again...// But it wasn't quite the same. He felt high and thrilled and ill and hard and on fire...

"You can't change anything, Mulder. What's lost is gone forever. There's so much you could gain, though."

The struggle had pulled Mulder's jacket off one of his arms, so he could feel Krycek shifting behind him even if he couldn't see it. Soft fur, sinfully sensual, preceded tickling feathers. The sharpness of claws or talons teased his shivering skin. But Krycek's face remained mostly the same, though his eyes sometimes went canine dark or feline slitted... And he didn't stop smiling, showing sharp teeth.

Repulsion warred with an almost mind-devouring desire. Mulder's body melted in sluttish abandon against its captor's even as his mind tried to regroup its defenses. //This isn't me!// Krycek growled low and soft in his throat in appreciation of the obvious surrender and spun Mulder around. The kiss that followed dragged Mulder's mind down into defeat. He couldn't think under the rush of emotion and sensation. He could hear colors, see the harshness of Krycek's panting breath, taste their mingled excitement.

_Kin_, his body screamed before taking over, to Mulder's terror and delight. //pleasuremergenowpleasenowmergekinherewant...//

It all moved so fast. He didn't know when his hands had started to roam Krycek's body or when the talons leaving light, raised marks on his skin started to make him buck into the other hand that stroked his bared cock. Somehow he'd ended up on his back on the desk. He'd lost his jeans, briefs, and sneakers somewhere during the riptide. The cuff on his right wrist kept his jacket half on and his shirt mostly on, but the rest of him had been exposed for his former partner's delectation. Krycek stroked and nipped, clawed and kissed. Mulder begged for it all and more.

He couldn't separate their motions from one another; it all felt too good, too right. Something seemed to stroke his whole body. He felt power rushing and prickling over his skin and almost thought he could change shape himself, resculpt himself into something different... Deluged, he couldn't find the room for terror or shame.

When slick fingers stroking inside him were followed by Krycek's cock, his mind blanked out completely. It was ecstasy and light and heat and perfection. He just moved and experienced it all. Orgasm felt like flying to the sun before dropping off the edge of the world.

Mulder came to with Krycek still draped on him. When he looked into dazed green eyes and a blissed-out face, he felt a little better. //It wasn't just me out of control there. He's as gone as I was.// Krycek murmured endearments into his skin.

Fear couldn't overwhelm the flooding sense of connection and well-being he had. //What the hell happened to us?//

Krycek's kiss tasted like peppermint and blood. Looking feral and sweet, he rolled over and put his clothing back on, then mussed Mulder's hair. "Do you need a little time to think it over? It can be intense the first time like this."

The last statement made no sense to him, but Mulder nodded anyway. A thumb that, oddly enough, didn't seem to have a callus stroked his lower lip. Krycek said, in a voice that sounded almost loving, "You'll be fine. You just need a little time to put yourself back together. I'll give you a few minutes."

When Krycek walked out, Mulder closed his eyes, tried to figure out what had happened, and fought down the soul-deep urge to go after the bastard to see if they could do it again.

******************************************************

Jeff waited and brooded. He didn't like any of this, but he especially didn't like the plan and Alex's prominent place in it. It already had too many variables that could screw him over even before you threw an opportunist like the assassin into the mix. Also, he had to show his commitment to the plan first by hiding Alex's scouting forays from his father while he had to trust that the other man really was thinking of ways to get him out as well.

Trust was a sucker's game.

Alex Krycek walked out of the room looking like sex itself. Hair mussed, lips kiss-swollen, he moved with a swagger that charged the air around him. Then he stopped and said, "Jeff, I know you're there. You might as well turn off the invisibility."

Jeff let himself be seen. He kept forgetting that Alex used senses other than just sight to "see" people. Being... what he had become couldn't foil Krycek's enhanced sense of smell. //I have to stop thinking I know him. I don't. He's dangerous, unpredictable, and prone to side-jumping. Keep that in mind.//

But he couldn't help smiling a little. //I have secrets too...//

Jeff didn't know yet whether having Mulder here would hurt or help his plans, but he did see the effect the bastard had on Alex. //He means something to you, doesn't he? Is he a meal, a possession, a mate? All of the above?//

"You said I'd get my share of the spoils," Jeff said. "I want you to know I'll hold you to that."

Jeff knew that, no matter what he'd said, Alex intended no such thing, but the words had the intended effect. Alex snapped at the bait. "Like hell. Mulder isn't 'spoils,' he's mine, and I'll be damned if I let one of your revenge fantasies ruin him for me."

Jeff moved closer to Alex. "You know that Mulder has already started to change. I wouldn't have to rape him, not with the Call at work."

"He doesn't understand yet--"

"And you want him to think that the feelings he has now are completely because of you. Smooth, Alex."

"Aren't they? He's wanted me forever, you know. The times he had me just made it stronger." Krycek bared his teeth. His change had made him more feral, but sensuously so. "Jealous, Jeffy?"

They all but breathed one another's air. Jeff had never thought he'd ever be so drawn to a man, but, hell, he hadn't expected any of this. The Call drew the changed together so strongly that resistance wasn't an option; they never even thought of it at the time. And the sex... the sex was like nothing he'd ever experienced before. Trying to describe it was like trying to describe color to a person who'd never seen it before.

With the Call, sex was power, pleasure, connection, completion, a high, a song, breath itself... It drowned out thought. It let him touch the edges of Alex's wild power and self, let him experience the feeling of the shift and all the strengths that came with it. He wondered what Alex thought of the taste of his ability, to be overlooked and effaced...

Jeff knew that Krycek played on the Call's charge, used it to entrap, as he had used his own sexuality before. It still worked--Alex Krycek had only become more fuckable after his change--but the Call had a double-edge. He ensnared himself as well.

They devoured one another in the hallway just outside Mulder's //_my_// door, exchanging fevered kisses that brought them closer but never close enough. Even as Jeff let the delirium take him over, he knew that Alex would betray him sooner or later and found that inevitability a comfort in an ever more insane existence. Krycek would be reliable in his unreliability, and the world would continue to turn...

Jeff had always wanted things he could never have or keep. He was used to it.

They stroked and ground against one another, lost in the rush. Jeff let Alex's wild power wash over him. It felt so good that it hurt. It always amazed him that the flood of pleasure, the ecstasy, didn't kill him. The scent of Mulder still clinging to his lover maddened and aroused him at once. His grip turned tighter and harsher, and Alex laughed...

The two arms, one natural and one... not, still freaked Jeff out sometimes. It stunned him that Alex had relearned to use it so quickly, but maybe it was like the other changes. The instinct for flight or running on four legs seemed to be integral to the shape, and Alex just picked it up. Just let normal thinking slide away in favor of _being_. Maybe the arm too remembered what it should be and how it should work. The thought almost made him recoil.

If only the Call could obliterate Jeff's mind completely instead of partially. His thoughts flew screaming around like panicked birds trying to escape a glass house, beating themselves against the windows in an effort to get free. Then Alex bit his neck in orgasm, and that last bit of overload emptied his mind and his cock at once.

They leaned against the wall, breathing hard and trying to slow their hearts. As Alex tongued Jeff's ear, he asked, "Anything happen while I was gone?"

Jeff tried to think past what Alex was doing to him. "I tried to go through the wall."

"And?"

"It wouldn't let me through, tried to rip me to pieces. The thorns kept slashing at me. It seems that Dad doesn't want me to leave."

Jeff had debated telling Alex this now, but had finally decided that the assassin would be much more pissed off if he found out when they attempted the wall for the actual escape. At this point, Alex still had to pretend that he wanted to get his ally out as well.

//Alex still needs me. For now.//

"How does the wall decide who will pass, Jeff?"

"Dad muttered something once about thought patterns. The wall only lets ones it's 'programmed' to recognize pass through. It accepts yours, but not mine."

"You have to stop thinking?" Alex smiled.

"I don't know. It lets animals through with no trouble."

"It passes me through, and it let me bring Mulder. He was unconscious at the time... The thorns started to twitch near the end, though."

"You're going to knock us both out and carry us through at a run?"

"We'll figure out something." Alex looked back at the door. "I don't think Mulder should be left alone for any longer. Come in with me, Jeff. This should be interesting."

******************************************************

Mulder crouched behind the desk, conjured knife in hand. He couldn't let Krycek take him in so easily or let himself fall prey to that madness again. He had goals, and becoming Alex Krycek's tame fucktoy wasn't one of them, no matter how incredible it felt.

His fingers hurt from clenching convulsively on the knife handle. Krycek would come back.

The door opened, and he heard, "Are you playing with me, Mulder? You should know that I love games."

For once in his life, Mulder successfully resisted the urge to make a stupid quip. He just had to be silent and wait. His moment would come.

A slight breeze on his left side made him suspicious. He slashed at the air and heard something yelp in surprise. Something gripped his arms, so he fought back, twisting and slashing. Spender suddenly became visible. Mulder went still in surprise, and the other man smashed his head into the side of the desk.

Dazed, Mulder slumped back in Spender's grip and tried to ignore the thrumming in his body that reminded him of his bout with Krycek. Even with his head ringing, the touch felt so damned good. //Jeffrey Spender too? I'm a fucking slut...//

Krycek bounced down from the top of the desk and put a hand on his shoulder. "Done yet, Mulder?"

Mulder's brain whited out from overload. Too much information, too much power, too much...

He thought he heard Spender say, "Alex, let go of him."

"Why?"

"He can't think when we're both touching him."

"Really."

"Alex, he can't _think_ when we're both touching him."

"I see." Krycek took his hand away, and Mulder could reason again. Sort of. He still wanted to jump them, but at least he could think enough to know what a stupid idea that was. He was helpless against whatever the hell was working on him.

Mulder suddenly started to tremble uncontrollably. He couldn't take it anymore. Days of pushing back the horror, helplessness, and fatigue finally caught up with him at the worst possible moment, in front of two of his enemies. Having abandoned strength, all he could do was stay with this and hope he could get them to underestimate him.

Spender's grip turned surprisingly gentle, and Mulder felt a wave of something pass into him from his captor. It felt a bit like sympathy. The other man pulled him in closer, so he could lean back.

//What the hell is he doing? What does he want?//

"Alex, he needs rest. He won't get very far otherwise."

"Who said I was going anywhere with either of you?" Mulder asked. It horrified him to realize that he sounded petulant instead of assertive. But Spender just stroked his hair and held him close. //This is a damned subtle revenge.// In contrast to Krycek's feral, chaotic power, Spender's felt quieter, more elusive. Ephemeral.

Krycek looked disappointed, then brightened a little. He spoke as if Mulder hadn't said a word. "We shouldn't leave until morning anyway."

They ignored Mulder's protests and dragged him into a large storage room. Its office supplies had been removed to make way for a huge, luxurious bed. In moments he was at the center of a puppy pile, with an enemy on either side. The strange link he felt to them hummed happily and comfortably, lulling him to sleep.

Mulder awoke feeling warm and comfortable with someone's hand draped on his hip and his face turned into someone's neck. He realized it was Spender's hand and Krycek's neck. //A weasel and a rat. The rodents rule here.// But Mulder hadn't felt this good in a long time.

Mulder knew he had to get out of here before his loneliness and encroaching insanity prompted him to accept this lunacy as normal.

He slid slowly and carefully away from them and tried not to enjoy the feel of Spender's hand trailing up his side as he moved. He got off the bed and left the room without waking them.

Mulder listened carefully for other people and clung to the shadows. The downtrodden work crews, candlelit halls, and unfamiliar smells made the once familiar building foreign. One scent in particular, a somehow stale smell of metal and sulfur, drew him in. There seemed to be a giant hole through the center of the building ahead, and he couldn't help walking closer in curiosity.

The crater and destruction paled in importance to the creature that rested in it, illuminated by torchlight. It looked like a dragon. //It can't be a-- Oh, what the hell do I know? I didn't think any of this was possible.// Books usually described their skin as looking like metal, but this one's hide just seemed to be a softly shimmering gray that recalled ashes. //Krycek said that the major Syndicate members had become dragons.//

The thought staggered him.

Something grabbed him away from the edge and dragged him back into the shadows. "Didn't believe me, did you?" Krycek asked.

The insanity returned with that touch. Mulder pulled away but couldn't get out of Krycek's grip. "You've been known to lie on occasion."

Krycek smiled. "We can't leave until daylight." He dragged Mulderback to the room.

When Krycek tossed Mulder onto the bed, Spender woke up and stretched, looking surprisingly sensual. "Mulder's starting to annoy you already?" Spender asked.

"He got out. Why didn't you wake up, Jeff?"

Spender just smirked. "Why didn't you?"

Krycek climbed onto the bed and grabbed Spender, with Mulder scurrying to get out of the way. Krycek and Spender kissed, grinding against one another madly, but when Mulder tried to leave, his former partner snagged his arm again.

"Going somewhere, Mulder?"

"I'm not your party favor."

"You don't have to be, but I don't want you wandering around. It's not safe."

"What do you care?"

"The Smoking Dragon's been known to eat people. I don't think you want to end that way."

Mulder shuddered. "I can take care of myself."

Spender spoke up. "We'll tie you to something if we have to, but I think you'd be happier if we didn't. You could promise not to leave."

Realizing it was a fight he couldn't win, Mulder gave in. Besides, he might find a chance to slip away when Krycek and Spender were too... involved to notice. "I promise."

Krycek smirked but went back to what he was doing. Mulder tried not to look, but the sounds kept drawing his eyes back. The moans, sighs, and faint growls accompanied a frenzy of stroking and kissing. It was a bit like watching _Wild Kingdom_. When Spender teased the head of Krycek's cock with his surprisingly pretty mouth, Mulder had to bite back a groan of his own. //I can't be getting off on this.//

When Spender took it in deep and started to hum, to Krycek's very vocal approval, Mulder had to conclude that he _was_ getting off on this. The sight of Krycek arching off the bed, roaring out his orgasm, almost made Mulder come right there. Only pride and a terror at what he was feeling stopped him. He wouldn't, not like that.

Mulder unzipped his jeans to relieve some of the discomfort, but that didn't help the hot, swelling heaviness he felt in his cock. If he didn't jerk off, he would explode.

But before he could reach for it, Krycek did, gripping his cock tightly at the base. Mulder squeaked. His former partner grinned, mocking and sultry all at once, and asked, "Are you sure you don't want us to help you with it?"

Mulder felt a hard claw tracing his delicate skin. He groaned.

"Good enough," Krycek said as he pulled Mulder up to a standing position.

Krycek knelt before him //Now there's something I could get used to// while Spender stood behind him. Surrounded, he felt a spike of terror and lust. They pulled his jeans down. Alex gripped him by the hips and started to stroke a rough, hot tongue along his cock, making him jerk. Then a slick finger pushed up into him and hit his prostate, making him gasp. Spender. //Can't think; don't want to; it's so good; why is it so good?//

Mulder swayed back and forth, to Spender and then to Krycek and back again, drowning under the sensations of the two-sided assault. They somehow timed it so Alex pulled with his mouth and Spender stroked with his fingers at exactly the same time. Mulder couldn't turn back from this now even if he'd wanted to.

Then Spender thrust in with his cock just as Krycek took him down deep. Mulder shrieked as they set a hard, relentless pace. The strokes reverberated through his whole body, while teeth that shouldn't have been quite that sharp nipped at him as their owner sucked, sheathing him in hot wetness. Glittering green eyes that looked human only part of the time locked onto his and wouldn't let him go. He would have tumbled to the floor if they hadn't been holding him up.

Mulder came hard, exploding into Krycek's mouth, and pushed back so hard on Spender that the other man came as well. Krycek stood, grinning as he licked his lips, and pushed them onto the bed. As satiated as Mulder felt, the look in his former partner's eyes made his cock twitch. //Not again. Not already.//

Krycek rolled Mulder onto his stomach and stroked in while Spender leaned back on the pillows and lazily watched. Mulder whimpered at how good and right it felt to have Krycek's weight at his back and his hard cock sliding slowly inside him, so good and so right that he couldn't feel resentful at having been appointed bottom boy. He flushed under Spender's hungry gaze but couldn't help behaving like a total slut.

"I've figured out our escape plan. It's so damned simple it'll make you sick," Krycek panted.

"Tell us," Mulder gasped.

"I'll show you. Later."

Once Spender started to caress his cock, Mulder had his second orgasm for the session. Krycek, though, continued to ride him for a while afterward, taking his time. It was oddly comforting, and Mulder felt strangely, inextricably, bonded to them. Whatever else happened, he would be leaving with them.

After Krycek had reamed Mulder to his satisfaction, he planted a kiss at the back of the other man's neck and said, cheerfully, "We're all so close now, it's almost incestuous."

//I know I'm going to regret this.// But Mulder went to sleep entangled with them anyway.

******************************************************

Alex looked at the pulsing wall of thorns, then at his partners. "Just climb onto the dolly and wrap around one another. I'm hoping that the Call will change your thought processes enough to let me wheel you through."

"The call?" Mulder asked. He moved gingerly but had that freshly-fucked glow Alex loved to see on him.

"We don't have time to get into it now. You'll figure it out."

Mulder pouted a little, making Alex want to bite him. "And if it doesn't work?"

"I run back like hell with you and hope you'll be alive to take another shot at it."

Jeff actually smiled. "Good thing we have you here to reassure us."

//Maybe I'll keep him around after all. He's unexpectedly interesting.// "Hop on."

Jeff got on first, arranging himself and their luggage as well as he could, before opening his arms to Mulder, who cast a doubtful look at the whole enterprise before climbing on. They wrapped their arms around one another and took on that vague, inward-looking expression that came with being linked through the Call. Alex hoped it would be enough of a change to get them through the wall.

Alex pushed the dolly forward. The thorns parted for them but twitched menacingly in an atypical way, as if trying to decide if they should be attacking instead. He walked faster. When the thorns started to make a faint threshing sound, Alex started to run. The dolly almost overbalanced a few times, but he managed to keep Mulder and Jeff on it until just after they cleared the barrier. As they hit the asphalt, a stem as thick as Alex's arm took a last swipe, tearing the back of his jeans. He pushed the others forward and shimmied clear.

Jeff looked around at the devastation, stunned. "I hadn't been out of the building since the morning before the Change..."

"We don't have time to sightsee; we have to haul ass before our absence is noticed. Get on." Alex transformed into a sable-colored stallion and felt his mind changing with his body. After a moment's hesitation the two-legs climbed onto him, and he started to run.

******************************************************

Mounted on the speeding Krycek-horse, with Spender clinging to him from behind, Mulder could barely think. The scenery zipped by at an alarming rate, and what Krycek called the Call buzzed through his mind. They raced for an unknown length of time before he felt Krycek start to falter beneath him. When the horse stopped, breathing hard and frothing a bit, Mulder pulled himself and Spender off.

Then the soreness hit. //Will I be able to walk the rest of the way?//

Krycek returned to his human form and knelt, shuddering, in the street. "It _hurts_." His hands looked swollen and badly bruised. His feet had also swelled to strain his boots.

//Running on all fours on asphalt might have done it.// Even as Mulder felt the disbelief //I'm still feeling disbelief?// and pity hit, he also knew that they couldn't stop yet, even though he didn't know how far they'd gotten. There had to be something-- He concentrated for a minute and conjured a travois.

"Get on and lie down. I'll pull you the rest of the way," Mulder said. //No matter how much it hurts. Why am I doing this?// Krycek looked at Mulder with stunned eyes but did as he was told. For once. He quickly let himself go to sleep once settled. "Spender, you'll have to defend us. I won't have my hands free." Spender nodded and drew his gun.

The next few hours wracked Mulder's nerves, already frayed from the weariness and strain of keeping the conjured travois together while walking and pulling it as well. At least Spender carried the packs of supplies and ammunition. Mulder kept going by methodically putting one foot before the other, going mentally numb to ignore the pain, and never thinking how far he would have to go before he could stop. That strategy had gotten him through the days following Scully's death.

While their surroundings looked deserted, he could swear he felt eyes following them from every wall and pile of rubble. He wished they could move faster, but he couldn't see any way of doing that.

Mulder saw a movement in his peripheral vision. Something huge and dark launched itself at Spender from behind a large pile of bricks. A long, thickly furred hand festooned with claws struck toward the other agent before Mulder could even shout a warning.

But the claws and fist flew right _through_ Spender, though he flinched as they passed. Once they were free of him, he fired into its head at point blank range. With most of its head blown off, the creature fell to the ground dead. Spender stared at it and tried to catch his breath.

Mulder stared silently himself for a while before he finally asked, "You don't just turn invisible, do you, Spender?"

Spender turned wide eyes on him. "I'm naturally invisible and intangible. I have to concentrate not to be. I'm more willing to let my concentration falter and slide into invisibility than... the other. It's not as-- I'm just tired right now."

//That's awful, and it has to be a hell of a strain.// Mulder stared for a second more, then realized, //I don't think Krycek knows about the second talent. If that's so, they don't trust each other either. Doesn't surprise me, but...//

"Why couldn't you get through the wall yourself, then?"

"The thorns are a specific kind of warding magic. They managed to tear at me even while I was intangible. Imagine my surprise when one sliced into my arm." Spender straightened. "You could call me 'Jeff,' you know."

"That was damned good work... Jeff. You saved our asses."

Jeff smiled a little, almost wistfully. "I know."

An uneventful hour later, Krycek came to again and directed them to their stop for the night, a fortified area he'd taken note of during one of his scouting expeditions. Mulder started a fire, though still uneasy at his ability to do so, and volunteered for first watch. His insomnia was turning out to be useful in this new world.

He looked at his traveling companions, his former enemies. What a team the three of them made. One had no stable identity and shifted from creature to creature, self to self, so easily that Mulder wondered if he was even aware of it anymore. The second couldn't touch anything or be seen unless he made a special effort. //Then there's me, who can make something out of nothing if I believe strongly enough. Somebody had a sense of humor about this.//

Spender and Krycek weren't the allies he would have chosen, but he was starting to think that he wouldn't survive without them. Or want to.

### End


End file.
